A 53-year-old woman was recently arrested after she moved out of a 50-sq.-meter rental apartment in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, leaving behind 26 dogs. She hadn't paid her rent for some time and went missing in early June. By the time someone entered her apartment on July 3, one of the dogs was already dead. She was later found in a rented house with five dogs.

"I was told to get out of the apartment," she told police. "But I couldn't take all the dogs, so I only brought the ones I was sure would have died if I left them there."

The apartment building where she had lived was managed by the semi-public housing corporation UR and does not allow pets. She was charged with abandoning the animals, but up to the point when she left the apartment she was not breaking any laws. UR went to court to evict her, but for non-payment of rent. Management certainly had to know she was keeping that many dogs, but all UR could do was to send her letters telling her to get rid of them or move out. Protective animal-welfare laws in Japan are weak, so even if the police had been called beforehand they probably wouldn't have been able to do anything until she actually abandoned the dogs.